Iraqis sack man named to head trial of Saddam

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Salem Chalabi, the man organising the trial of Saddam Hussein, has been sacked after allegedly failing to return from Britain to face a murder charge in Iraq.

Chalabi, whose uncle, Ahmad Chalabi, is the controversial founder of the Iraqi National Congress, has been removed as the head of the Iraqi special tribunal responsible for Saddam's case, congress officials said.

The move comes almost a month after an Iraqi judge issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of murdering a senior official in the Finance Ministry.

Another was issued for Ahmad Chalabi, accusing him of money laundering. Both men have denied the accusations.

On Monday night, Salem Chalabi described his sacking as "illegitimate" and said he intended to challenge it.

In an email to The Guardian in London, he said he had been appointed to the "independent tribunal" overseeing Saddam's trial for a period of three years, and that its status had been enshrined in Iraq's transitional administrative law. Without changing that status it was impossible for him to be sacked.

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The 41-year-old lawyer has been in London since July. He did not return to Iraq after he was named as a suspect for the murder of Haithem Fadhil, the director-general of the Finance Ministry. Official sources say Iraq's Council of Ministers has given his job to Talib al-Zubeidi, another lawyer.

Meanwhile, a senior US military official has said that US interrogators in Iraq have obtained much more valuable intelligence since coercive practices such as hooding, stripping and sleep deprivation were banned.

Major-General Geoffrey Miller, the commander in charge of detentions and interrogations, said the number of "high-value" intelligence reports drawn from interrogation of Iraqi prisoners had increased by more than half on a monthly basis since January, when officials first disclosed that they were investigating abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

However, the successes were tempered by the release this week of figures showing that the guerilla resistance in Iraq appears to be intensifying, raising questions about the value of the intelligence.

A US military official said on Monday that US soldiers and their allies were attacked an average of 87 times a day in August, the highest figure since US and British forces deposed Saddam Hussein and his government 17 months ago.

US forces fought insurgents loyal to the radical Shiite imam Moqtada al-Sadr in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City yesterday. Thirty-four people were reported killed and 193 injured.

Elsewhere, a statement said to be from the captors of two French journalists in Iraq on Monday gave France 48 hours to accept three new conditions - agreeing to a recent truce offer by Osama bin Laden, payment of $US5 million ($7.25 million) ransom and a pledge not to get involved in Iraq.